The Onions That Walk and the Chives That Bloom Like Fireworks
Some plants earn their keep by showing up quietly, reliably, day after day. We cook with onions and garlic nearly every time we turn on the stove—powdered, minced, roasted, or fried—and it’s easy to take them for granted.
But tucked into our garden beds here at Trefoil Gardens, a few unusual alliums have stolen our hearts. They’re the sort that grow with a bit of personality, return year after year, and make you feel like the garden itself is offering a little inside joke.
We’re talking about Egyptian Walking Onions and Garlic Chives—two perennials that don’t ask for much and give back more than their share.
These are not your average pantry staples. These are the workhorses with flair.
Egyptian Walking Onions
(Allium x proliferum)
Despite the name, these onions are neither Egyptian nor particularly obedient. What they are, though, is wonderfully weird. In spring, they send up elegant green stalks with hollow leaves, perfect for snipping and using like scallions. But as the season rolls on, the real show begins.
Instead of seeds, they grow a crown of tiny bulbs at the tip of their flower stalks. Those bulbs grow new stalks, which grow new bulbs, which… you guessed it… eventually flop over and root themselves into the soil. Hence the name—they “walk” their way around the garden bed, slowly multiplying in a kind of edible hopscotch.
We harvest the tops for their mild green-onion flavor, gather the pearl-sized bulblets for pickling or roasting, and let the roots keep doing what they do best—growing more onions.
Garlic Chives
(Allium tuberosum)
If walking onions are the garden’s eccentric uncles, garlic chives are the elegant aunts who bring gifts and always know just what to say.
Their flat, succulent leaves are packed with a soft garlicky flavor that’s beautiful in brothy soups, dumplings, stir-fries, and omelets. We grow them in a rotating bed system, harvesting one section each week so they’re never overworked, always coming back.
And then, in late summer, they bloom. Delicate white starbursts rise above the foliage like tiny floral fireworks. We often snip a few for bouquets—they’re too beautiful not to share.
Though we love them in the kitchen, we’ve also been known to tincture the seeds in the style of Traditional Chinese Medicine. In that form, they’re used as a warming digestive tonic—another quiet way these chives care for us.
Grown Here, Grown with Love
Both of these alliums are grown right here at Trefoil Gardens in Woodstock, Georgia, as part of our commitment to cultivating plants that are as useful as they are beautiful. We harvest them for the kitchen and for the market, but more than anything, we believe in sharing them—not just as food, but as starts.
Our nursery offers Egyptian Walking Onion sets and Garlic Chive plants, ready to root themselves into your home garden and begin their slow, steady magic. Whether you’re new to perennial gardening or just looking to add something reliable (and a little quirky), these are two of our favorite plants to recommend.
They grow with ease, multiply without fuss, and return season after season.
If you’re dreaming of a low-maintenance, high-flavor patch in your yard,
this might just be the beginning.